Worse than Bad Chocolate

[catalina_voice]

I just finished reading possibly the worst science fiction book I've ever read. I say "possibly" because I find bad science fiction so forgettable (and therefore may have forgotten something worse), not because this book had anything to redeem it. Called "Freedom's Ransom," it's apparently the fourth in a popular series. Consider yourself lucky to

Comments

[elnigma]

I loved some of Anne McCaffrey's earlier books (written pre-1984, last tolerable book I found by her was "Moreta's ride" - I guess I was sad or desperate to even like that.) A friend of mine insisted in the early 90's I had to give her another chance cause he loved the author Elizabeth Moon. Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon wrote probably the worst edited book I've ever read - "Sassinak". They'd arranged that one author write one half, the other the other half.. and not label who gets first and second, and make one book of it. Well, halfway through a smarmy badly-written book (with obvious McCaffrey touches) the plot line stops, book returns to a previous situation - the style different- and then for several chapters what had already happened repeats , then the book drudged on until it ended. A single reading of the book by ANYONE at any time would have meant someone could see that several chapters would have to be eliminated.. but nobody had apparently done that. I wonder if the later publishing of Sassinak being combined with its unnecessary two sequals was gently "nicked" bits out so as not to totally embarrass both authors. Or if later releases had, too. It was awful.

[catalina_voice]

Well, it's a relief to hear that someone else who liked the dragon stories found her intolerable later. (I remember the Moreta one, too. I didn't think it was very deep and didn't like her cheap reliance on the martyrdom theme, but I could read it without putting the book down in exasperation. I could still enjoy it.) What was getting me about this Freedom series was the assertion that these are popular best-sellers. Are people buying them just to buy them? Can people really enjoy reading that crap? (I tried to enjoy this, I really did. I had no choice, because I was sick. But it simply wasn't possible, because the book was stupid.) One explanation for the dreadfulness of the Freedom's Ransom book may be something found in the credits: she thanks the people of her chat room for essentially helping her to write it. Yeah, that's about how it comes across -- chat room dialogue. :-)

I've published a book before, so it's difficult to believe that the Sassinak book could get by without the most basic of edits, and yet I can also see how it could happen. (At deadline, sometimes they just skip things. They also will sometimes have different editors for different chapters, so it's possible no one did read the whole thing through. This makes no sense, of course, for a novel.) I'm definitely not getting fooled by McCaffrey again, though if Elizabeth Moon did something decent on her own, maybe I'll check that out.